Great to chat with Matt Ward, partner at 4WARDVC and host at The Startup Tank Climate Investor Pitch Show! 4WARD.VC invests in mission-driven pre-seed and seed-stage climate startups moving the world forward! ! We discussed climate economics, getting the timing right when starting a climate company, what makes a good pitch, the important of team, tam and timing in investing and more! 

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James

The unedited podcast transcript is below

James McWalter

Hello today we’re speaking with Matt Ward partner at 4WRDVC and host the startup tank climate investor pitch, welcome to podcast match brilliant to start would could you tell us a little bit about forward. Vc.

Matt Ward

Hey James thanks for having me.

Matt Ward

I Will I wish I had that awesome accent to make it sound better. So an early-stage climate Syndicate I E a group of Investors Lps Family offices, rich doctors around the world who want their money to do more than just be in a bank account or focused on stock. So we invest in.

Matt Ward

The most promising climate companies preseed and seed in Europe North america and Israel with a focus on the sci-fiesque startups that are changing the world in big ways and founders that something about them. You would bet on them regardless of what they’re doing. This is the kind of person that you say. This is an absolute winner doing massive things and they’re they’re going to succeed because venture is a game of exponential outliers and we we try to not only find those exponential outliers but also be a little of the of the steroids so to speak that make them a success. So. Since since starting forward a big part of my my mission was to do something that truly mattered I’d done so much in the past on ecommerce d to cbtwo b things that just didn’t feel that impactful so I worked on connecting with that over the course of the last year Seven hundred and eighty is actually the number I just published the new database today climate funds incubators accelerators corporate vcs trying to become super well connected in the space and that’s kind of how we how we use our syndicate we invest in companies. But we say we’re not going to be the biggest check at the table but we’re going to be. The biggest hustler we’re going to be the one who introduces you to twenty thirty Forty investors a bunch of clients etc so that we help you succeed. And yeah, that’s kind of us.

James McWalter

So Yeah, and I’d love to dig in more than into the founding story. So yeah, you believe you’re entrepreneur you were working on these other these other companies projects and so on and so when you’re trying to think through ways of Impact. Why did venture seem so appealing relative to potentially other options that were available to you and.

Matt Ward

So I I actually wrote a blog post about it 1 time and it was ah why I wanted to I wanted to make an f ton of money so I could be a good person and the the concept was and what I always had in my head tried to have a bunch of money so that I can focus on.

James McWalter

And character.

Matt Ward

Using those money that money that resources and my time on things that truly mattered if I want to make an impact for instance in Africa I could go and build houses and then I’m one hammer or I could go and sell the hammers helping people build houses and then it’s more hammers or I could create a company that’s. Building houses in Africa and then I’ve got a certain multiplier or I could have the company that’s helping other companies create house building ah or architect firms or I could be the one who’s lending the money and helping and you just get that exponential return the farther up that stack that you get and that’s why I was always interested in venture. So. Rewind a few years I I ran a podcast the syndicate which was my way of hacking myself into the scene of venture and startups I interviewed 10050 vcs and climate invest not climate investors sorry investors that were focused on early stage with the goal of starting a syndicate and ultimately a fund. Things were things were going pretty well that had kind of been on my radar for a while I ran another podcast the disruptors which was a long form Ted. All things exponential technology which was meant to be the deal flow and then my plan was to start getting into this and doing what I’m doing now but just several years ago things fell through on a. Earn out basis some Trump put his tariffs in place between the us and China the guy that bought my business ran a trade company between the us and China my business was an e-commerce business between the us and China so then I got back to working with ah working with startups on started gene growth.

James McWalter

Sure.

James McWalter

And then um, you know as you were kind of thinking through the I Love this analogy of yeah ways of having leverage right from the individual person hitting the hammer or building the hammer all the way through to like these high leverage kind of ideas around deploying the hammers and. Basically being picks and shovels if you will to kind of slightly change the metaphor when you’re kind of thinking through that. Ah, how do you think through like ah the emergence of an investment thesis. You know you talked about outlier individuals um working on know expenditure technology. Um, but ah, you know I think a lot of yeah feces will so say something similar. And so how do you think through the the different options around developing a specific thesis that you know suited or had the impact on the world that you wanted to have.

Matt Ward

Absolutely so I’d I’d spoken with a lot of investors at the time or and throughout that time and spoken with a lot of people in the climate impact space as well as well as scientists politicians startup founders probably. Probably interviewed about a thousand founders from previous podcasts. So I got a bit of a a bit of a framework there but the framework I like when it comes to venture evaluating something as a venture return or not I like the three t so teamamm timing. So Tam is this a massive massive market. So think multimalbillions. And either growing very quickly or incredibly outdated and right for disruption that’s check 1 check to the timing. Why is this something that’s possible now but wasn’t possible. 1 2 3 years ago because if it was possible three years ago why aren’t there other people doing it t number 3 the most important team. So. As I said in venture it’s ah it’s a game of venture is a game of winners and everybody else and that’s just how it works out because there is so much artificial fuel that gets pumped into it. You have the massive outcomes the hundred the thousand the ten Thousand x’s and then you have a lot of subpar performances. Unfortunately so you’ve got to have. Those outlier returns the other 2 kind of categories or ways I think about things are what’s the defensibility is there ipnetwork effects business moats, etc. What allows you to build this and then have this be something successful that not everybody knocks off within the next couple of years and going along the lines of that.

Matt Ward

There’s got to be a bit of crazy if it’s a if it’s a good idea quote unquote and everyone thinks it’s a good idea. It means it’s a terrible idea because if there’s going to be either a ton of competition or there already is there’ll be lots of funding and you’ll never be able to make any money so just on a venture side of things. That’s how I think about things now when it comes to an impact side of things that. A lot of vcs have different frameworks on how they think about things so some say okay carbon emission reduction some say carbon capture some say amounts of waste reduced etc in my opinion having a metric like that is actually the wrong approach because it very much limits you on what you can focus on a and b and more importantly. When was the last time you started a startup came up with the numbers and everything went according to plan the the lcas all the numbers are made up and going to be wrong and then you’re going to pivot in 2 years and things are going to be different and at the end you’re also cutting out ah a huge portion of companies where oh they’re not mitigating. Ah.

James McWalter

Sure.

Matt Ward

Gigaton They’re mitigating half a gigaton I Guess they’re not worth investing in and that just that just seems absurd to me So the the framework I have is what I like to call climate Economics I Actually just wrote a post about this if you guys want to check it out forward dot Vc so number fourward.vc investing in companies that move the world forward. That’s our little kicked phrase. But. Climate Economics What I How I think about it is there’s unit Economics. So for every for every um bagel that I sell or sandwich or box or service or new client or new etc. What how much are you making margins wise if it’s net positive then you’re making money. Well I have climate economics a similar concept for every product you sell for every new service. New client etc. Are you having proportionally positive and um improvements or benefits on the world in the climate if you are, you’re a climate company that checks the box. That’s my. Back at the envelope math because it means as you grow and Scale. You’re making the world a better place if it’s not something where it’s proportional and it kind of tailors off then there’s ah, there’s a questionableness to it.

James McWalter

I Yeah, it’s very interesting I actually have ah a friend who is a climate founder and he basically has a similar framework around what you call climate economics but he’s a bit harsher. He’s like there’s real climate companies. There’s fake climate companies right? and it like real climate companies is their business model impacts climate in a positive way.

Matt Ward

Ah, no I Totally I Totally agree.

James McWalter

Right? Or or has’t necessarily just climate but to your point like this kind of larger framework of sustainability because you know one of the struggles is like if you’re a company that’s figuring out how to you know conserve water at scale through better monitoring of you know water pipelines something along those lines that doesn’t really have like a direct carbon impact. But. I Think there’d be very few people who say wouldn’t say that that’s a massive neck good for the world for the you know for the environment and so on Um, and so I think it’s but it it all again. Depends does the business model actually tie to that upside impact.

Matt Ward

Exactly because if it doesn’t tie to the upside impact either while it scales. It’s no longer going to create the same type of impact or while it scales the the most beautiful model for any um government or land in the world is ah. Is the kind of happy. But um, what there’s a term for it. Beneficial dictator. What’s the benevolent dictator. The problem is you don’t know what the benevolent dictator son or daughter is going to be and that’s the problem when you have companies that don’t have this in their core Dna and business model is once you. Ah once you transition from.

James McWalter

And.

Matt Ward

Doing good. Well maybe you bring in the next Ceo who is doing good. But if we’re if we’re public and we’ve got these different incentives and suddenly we need to change thing a little bit eventually Google erases that don’t be evil thing from there from their corporate motto so to speak and then it’s all downhill from there.

James McWalter

Right? And and you can get obviously in Google is quite big and as you were talking I was thinking about the Google example before you mentioned it and yeah and I think there is definitely a you know an an inflection point that happens later in a company’s ah history and you know I actually think about in the Karmo Creditd space in particular. There’s a lot of I think understandable choices that certain companies will make where they want to be the measurement of the carbon as well as the marketplace of the carbon which when you’re like a pre-series c company makes a ton of sense right? These are small emergent markets. Measuring carbon is very very difficult, especially for some specific methodology right? like carbon and trees or carbon and soil. You know these kind of um, you know naturebased solutions type carbon measurements. These are you know, emergent industries and so getting a business model to sit just from measurement is quite difficult so a lot of them become maripas as well. And that flies I think at a certain size but equally when you get large enough. It’s like you don’t want the company doing the the measurements and the ratings be the company that sets the price and I think we’re going to also as company small they get ah not get away in a like a negative way like again people are just trying to figure out how to build markets in the first place. But as some of these industries grow larger. There will have to be I think segmentation in order to actually for that type of ah the legitimacy of these markets to get to that next level and so you do have these kind of balances like it’s easier to be ethical when you’re smaller. Um, but as you get larger, you know there’s more scrutiny and you have to be ah able to respond to that.

Matt Ward

Ethical or under the radar you mean Amazon shouldn’t pe out to own the marketplace and the products they sell and let other people sell and I totally agree. We’re not huge on carbon credit and carbon marketplace business models just because it feels like more of a.

James McWalter

I Call me crazy but probably not right at at some point. Yeah yeah.

Matt Ward

Ah, vitamin or ah or ah this was it feels like you’re relying on better nature to make things happen and at the same time We all know how to lose weight and not be obese and yet the majority of the world has a problem with that. So Sometimes I think you need to forcibly make change for for us though or for how I would think about it if you’re building a carbon monitoring solution instead of building the platform just be the referral engine for the other marketplaces. So Then you’re getting paid as a service provider and you’re getting paid for The. The the commissions or the referrals to a different marketplace then you don’t have to build both misses Models. You don’t have the conflict of interest and you don’t need to have 2 different teams.

James McWalter

I yeah and that makes a ton of sense to me I’d love to go through this teamtown timing and a bit more depth in each of those um because I actually think in the climate space. There. Some really interesting you know elements that are kind of difficult boat on the you know founder side as well as the investor side and. Want to start with Tam so every time I talk to climate founders. Ah you know, particularly those are fundraising. There’s always this you know I have a tam problem this comes up quite a lot because you have these 2 ideas in mind first if we truly take a you know full societal. You know all guns blazing. Ah. Approach to mitigating the worst effects of climate change tam should not be a problem as long as you’re taking a nice slice of the world economy right? because the world economy will be a climate- focusedcused. Ah you know approach at some point on the other hand a lot of these things are completely emergent right? You know whether you’re talking about. Ah you know, certain types of advanced materials. What you’re talking about. Even. You know, solar and and wind which are probably as you know mainstream as any of these technologies but are still combined in the United States less than 12% of total electricity generation. Ah you know there’s kind of the sense of like okay these things can and should be massive. But maybe today they’re so emergent or so small. You really have to kind of squint to try to identify like what an actual tam might look like how do you think about? you know, balancing. Ah you know the types of things that would have to be true for the time to be large enough to be venture backable versus you know what it actually might be right today.

Matt Ward

It’s the tam and it’s also the timing. So the only thing that’s worse than being ah wrong is being right? but with the wrong timing and that’s that’s one of the big problems with Vc you’re either if you’re too early you fail if you’re too late you fail you’ve got to get the timing right.

James McWalter

And.

Matt Ward

Um, that’s ah, that’s a great great question I think looking at like the Cr so the annualized compounded growth how that’s scaling can be 1 way to see if things are starting to take off. You can also part of it’s going to just have to be got instinct to be honest, so. People may have thought that augmented reality or get whatever the technology was ready at x stage and then five years later it’s still at the same place Ray Kurzweil has been telling us for at least 20 years that a I will be here in 20 years um I think for how I think about it. I try to look at where I see the intersections with other technologies coming into into play where you see the incentives so a lot of times with climate tech in particular incentives play a big role so are there carbon taxes coming or are there carbon monitoring requirements coming or are. Eu grants and other things pushing these things forward and if they are does it feel like there’s enough forward momentum to make that stick at the same time they’ve got to have a large enough market now to attack. But it in venture the better. The question shouldn’t be what happens if it goes wrong or. Is this the right wrong timing or but it should be what happens if it goes right? and that’s that’s kind of the that’s kind of the caveat. So having those different filters in place helps you weed out winners and losers. But then like I said with forward Vc.

Matt Ward

Ah I’ve spent the last year trying to connect with all the all the big players in the space. The corporates the vcs the investors the incubators everyone so that even if it isn’t necessarily perfect. We push. Ah, we push our companies into positions where suddenly they have that. Perfect irregardless because everything comes down to everything comes down to execution and connections. But that one step can make a big difference if you suddenly had a conversation earlier with with Honda’s um cvc unit and suddenly if we’re able to introduce them to the it. Battery company. We just invested in and Honda decides to go forward. That’s like a hundred steps forward for a on the battery company despite it only being one small little deal which can ah which can help with things like timing and help with things like acceleration so they can get to scale.

James McWalter

Yeah, and actually that that does raise. Um, so one of the things just because you mentioned it before I want to get on to the team. But this is kind of very interesting situation around lps. So for the audience limited partners. Um, the folks who basically invest into the. You know the funders syndicate and are typically you know at ah like ah not directly interacting with the entrepreneur but a lot of lps are you know might be experts in a given domain that might have an impact and upside impacts from to what you mentioned. You know, maybe they’re you’re in the energy space and a large energy company or anewable energy company is an lp of a fund that might invest in yeah, it’s been actually quite surprising to me having gone through a couple of fundraisers of my own in the last year and and you know close and have great. Ah great investors and so on that there’s a lot of talk. Of of how lps can help portfolio companies but not just from my own experience but like talking to a lot of founders who in the climate space generally the lps have not really come to fruition in the way that I think that both the investors hoped as well as the entrepreneurs hoped. How do you think about that balance of you know, actually. You know, getting a better connection between lps who in theory right? Or in the domain could be that first customer or seventh customer that has a big impact or even just on the advice side. Um, versus maybe the status quo isn’t quite there in terms of the lp you know, accelerating the growth of an individual startup. So.

Matt Ward

I Think it really depends So a lot of our lps are individual Angels or operators and generally they like to be hands-on value ad where possible because they’ve been in that Boat. They’re involved and they want to see their investments grow then there’s the larger Scale Lps. Where you’re talking primarily Corporate is what it sounds like the questions leaning towards I think then you have to have some type of urgency in the in the offer so to speak so I was at a climate meetup last night and randomly on the way home before hopping into the tram I bumped into the the head of innovation with donone um or done.

James McWalter

I yeah.

Matt Ward

Dano and I’m not sure how it’s pronounced one of the the top ah food companies in the world and I’m advising a company now called climate crop in Israel they’ve discovered a protein that increases yields 20 to 90% in all crops and say it’s not native to the to the crop.

James McWalter

Oh.

Matt Ward

And it increases carbon capture it doubles the carbon capture. So the approach I’ve I’ve kind of suggested to them and the approach I brought up last night as well as look we um, we’ve got technology for food companies to half their carbon footprint and we’re looking to Crown winners in different ah in different sectors.

Matt Ward

That winner can be denona or it can be kelloggs and we’re trying to figure out who we should work with should we have a serious conversation kind of thing and I think founders can do similar things as well where if there are other players involved and look I can either go to poorsche or I can go to Bmw. Um.

Matt Ward

Where do where do you think this would be more valuable or we’d like to go to porsche because my dad had a porsche or whatever The reason is that you need to have to get that conversation going because the last thing that they want is to fall behind their competition.

James McWalter

I yeah, that makes a ton of sense and I just side note um as you mentioned danon so I was the english tutor of a the known executive in Genoa Italy in the summer of 2006 Very very long time ago just that’s my major impact with the known. Um, it’s just kind of random thing. 1 of 1 of those kind of weird jobs. Um, and yeah, at that time we would just talk about the the strategy that they were working on because he was just trying to learn english to or improve his english to talk strategy and so I I was probably told things yeah very out of date at this point but in 2006 I was like oh I know all the about the Knowns. Ah. European expansion plans at that time. Yeah they’re they’re doing great and they’re moving into the you know the alternative dairy and and so on and in this very interesting way. Um, love to get then onto the team side of things so you know I guess when I think about like a classic you know Silicon Valley type

Matt Ward

They seem to have gone very well.

James McWalter

Founding team. You know you’re talking 2 founders 1 may be more businessorientated one maybe more technical often boat or technical but just one you know focuses more on the fundraising and the customer acquisition. Um, they are typically coming from a mixture of other startups potentially or even big tech and. They’re very kind of software driven when I think about the climate space because we are have really any effect right? We are trying to change atoms. You know we we are trying to do something with Carven levels. We’re trying to do some different elements with the built environment. Whatever it may be you start to see. Okay, how do we actually get maybe the. People on the technical side who are maybe not coming directly from software background but often are coming from more academic backgrounds where the cutting edge science often is when you’re looking at like teams. How do you think about what a good mix of team members are are there particular attributes. You’re looking for and how important I guess is domain knowledge in the climate space relative to. You know more generalist founders who can just move fast and and like us break things even though that phrase has obviously been broken. Um by by Facebook’s shenanigans

Matt Ward

I think it depends I like to see even even more so I just my my my feeling and what I’ve learned and seen in the space is winners win and everybody else comes in second. And that’s just kind of Ben been the experience. That’s what I’ve learned from other investors as well when we evaluate teams. We I mean we love to see great universities. Um, incredible expertise people that have experience in the space serial founders. Well-connected.

Matt Ward

But it also has to be that person where where you talk to them. You get that? Holy shit feeling like there’s something special about this person. Maybe you get the Goose bumps. They’re an incredible salesperson. They’re incredibly charismatic. Those aren’t. As much as we don’t want those to be important things those are incredibly important when it comes to being successful in this space because you have to attract funding you have to attract talent you have to be able to sell to customers. You have to have something tangible about that about you that gets people to say yes, excuse me so we definitely look for. Those type of characteristics will do reference checks as well on founders to see what other folks have to say about them as a person as a leader as an employee one of the checks I like to ask as well is would you would you leave your current job to go work for them or would you invest in their company now. Ah, that can be incredibly valuable and then the dynamic between the 2 partners how well do they know each other where do they know each other from why did they come together. Do they have complementary skill sets have they had and do can they have hard discussions. Those are those are some of the things that I think about. As well as we work with a lot of accelerators. So as I said ah we’ve reached out to a lot of climate funds and accelerators. We’ve actually got a full vc database on our website for anybody interested. It’s just four ward dot vc vc database with all those now funds accelerators, etc. Filterable by stage sector geography check size.

Matt Ward

But with that there’s some that we really like and know so we’ll we’ll rely on other funds other accelerators etc for help on the due diligence on the tech side but also on the people side of things so company like I can’t really announce that one yet, but that we’re investing in now went through. Ah, prominent accelerator that we know really well and has a couple of lead investors in the round that we know really well and every single person said about this founder that ah she’s an absolute machine and just performance an incredible leader the kind of person you absolutely want to invest in and that was. Ah, hundred percent my experience when when dealing with her and that’s why we’re investing in the company alongside incredible tech that is circular and world changing. It’s the people that know this person believe completely in this person and that conviction is pretty strong. And it’s a pretty strong indicator of success.

James McWalter

I yeah, it’s it’s really interesting. Um, because you know again I’d love to kind of bring in some of my and recent experience fundraising yeah know and we we’re very lucky. We were quite successful in our in both of our fundraises this year and previous I had tried to raise things and never gotten anywhere and so you know I’ve seen both sides of it. And I think what’s really interesting about what what was shocking to me is how quick a investor will move after that first call um like of our you know nearly 3000000 invested I would say more than 70% were on the basis of a total of maybe two and a half to 3 hours of calls across all investors like of those investors that invested. Um, you know often. It’s a 30 minute call there’s yeah I’m I’m sure there’s a ton. Obviously that goes on behind the scenes but in terms of the founder’s own time with the investor. It’s.

Matt Ward

The half.

James McWalter

Been quite low and it’s just been very very so you know interesting to me about how these large 7 figure decisions get made. Um you know? and yeah I come from a farming background where yeah these numbers are you know, kind of extraordinary. Um, and so you know when you kind of think about. Yeah you kind of went through. You know, especially if they’re connecting to other investors and like that that kind of shared due diligence and you know it sounds like you’re new to getting a specific vibe off them in the first 10 or 15 minutes um you know I guess how do you kind of think through after the fact, right? because some some people are ah you know, just ah has.

Matt Ward

Adam Newman yeah

James McWalter

Yeah, exactly. Um, we actually I was at the the Yc and the batch event last week and one of the talks was how to identify high functioning sociopaths was part of it was like oh they very they interview very very well and so yeah I guess how do you think through? Um, you know when. I guess like warning signs because you absolutely as a venture you know, somebody who’s looking for outside returns are looking to to say yes, right? rather than say no and in many cases. But yeah I guess how do you balance that aspect of okay I’m only going to be talking to this person for you know an hour before I put in 6 or 7 figures into them.

Matt Ward

I would say the high functioning sociopath isn’t necessarily a bad thing if you were to look at public market ceos I want to say 20% of them at the very least are categorized as um, is it sociopath or narcissist. It’s one of the other.

Matt Ward

But there there is something about that personality trait that does lead to massive desires for success and massive abilities to recruit and build Now. That’s not to say this is good or bad. It’s just that’s kind of how the how the stats spoil out What what we look for or what I look for is. At the same time trying to have the the doubt in the gotchas of trying to avoid getting tricked by something doing the due diligence of making sure the text solid making sure the people are solid with reference checks. But it’s um, yeah I won’t lie and Say. It’s It’s a challenge and we try to build up relationships over time with founders. But that’s not always possible. Sometimes we’ll come in once there’s already a larger vc in the round and we’ll just be doing a smaller Check. Sometimes it’s worth incredibly convinced by the founder and then we’ll go out and actively scout our network For. Intros of these are the investors we want to be involved and bring them and try to bring them into the round.. That’s that’s a little bit more of how how we operate.

James McWalter

And because I know you have ah your the startup tank climate investor Pitch show. Um, which I’ve watched some you know, many a video of and yeah, sounds quite inspired by by Shark Tank and what’s interesting actually about Shark Tank which I’ve yeah watched for many years which. My wife and you know is that they generally are looking for reasons to say no right? So It’s like slightly different to like the typical kind of venture approach but thinking through what makes a good pitch from your perspective right.

Matt Ward

I would say even in venture they’re looking for reasons to say no because if you’re looking to for reasons to say yes, you’ll find too many of those reasons. So I think that’s an important caveat but what makes a good pitch well on the on the startup tank. Um founders get 5 minutes to pitch. But what I like to say is you really need to nail the who what? where why? And why now of the pitch so who are who are you selling to what are you doing and what’s the massive problem that you’re tackling why is your solution better. Having something involved in there with the the traction of what you’ve got to date that kind of don’t miss out why now. So why this hasn’t been done and why this is the perfect one and why you are the perfect one to do this and then of course in Vc it all comes down to how big so make sure you share. How big and where this can really get to.

James McWalter

Yeah, it makes a ton of sense and I think that something that a lot of first -time founders and particularly founders who I think in climate tech tend to be from more diverse backgrounds than you know, a kind of classic software and tech background. You got to pitch a lot. Like it’s like anything else. You’re not going to be good for a while like I feel like when I was doing pitches you know and and sometimes you’d have nine back-to-back calls with investors and I definitely wasn’t as good as my 8 to 8 as I were you know in my yeah, the first first ou have to warm up but like second third and fourth where you definitely were better. Um, you just get tired all those kind of elements. But getting into a specific rhythm right? How you’re actually nailing that and I did find that as you get more experienced. It goes from being a formal pitch to something more conversational and relationship building and I think that does change at the post-s series a stage where it’s much more about the numbers. But I think in the kind of seed to precede. Stage and you wrote up series a um, you can just you know I think getting into a cadence and into a conversational element with the investor is something that I think a lot of startup founders who aren’t used to it. Um, kind of make a mistake which how how do you think about that.

Matt Ward

I would agree. But I think you need to be able to grab their attention. So the most important thing about the first meeting is getting the second meeting and the most important thing about the second meeting is getting the third meeting generally and your email just has to get a meeting. So.

Matt Ward

In terms of how you pitch or get people excited. You really have 30 to 60 seconds to really grab someone’s attention at the beginning and that’s what you need to hammer home and then after that once you’ve got someone’s interest peaked then I think you can play it how you want to play it.

James McWalter

Yeah, that makes a ton of sense subject lines and emails are very important to put put your traction there ah put something that is very if you have traction or probably something that is you know eye catching because you may only get the subject line especially if it’s cold.

Matt Ward

Yeah.

Matt Ward

And to have that have that traction and eye catching this also at the last slide of the pitch deck because you want people to remember you and take action and not just next.

James McWalter

Yeah, and actually on that. Um there’s actually a lot of you know I guess conflicting advice on decks. Some folks are you know you need to have this beautiful stylized deck I think we’re moving more and more into that place I’ve heard what I would probably call like not the. Ideal waste of money although people have argued to me that spending $5000 on designers to make a perfect deck foree is a good idea. But um, you know I feel you can figure out with some template something. That’s that’s kind of cheaper. But how do you think about the impact of deck because I will say that and I know this the stamp of approval from ah. And incubator like Yc which which helps but weisc’s very much like spend 20 minutes on your deck. They’re like it shouldn’t look pretty It should just literally be sentence number sentence number on each slide and then you’re done. Um, which I think is is quite extreme and. Was advice that pretty much everybody that I’ve ever spoken to I see is conflicted against. Um, so yeah, how how do you think about like the the time the effort you know where where’s the highest leverage part of a deck that an individual startup founder should look at right.

Matt Ward

a Harvard a Harvard Education is worthless but a Harvard degree is priceless. It’s some type of filter. So Yc has that filter built in of oh you got into Yc I got to take this seriously. But for other for other founders once that aren’t going through super prestigious programs. If you see 2 pitch decks and 1 looks nice and professional and one doesn’t who do you think is getting the meeting and the funding it kind of comes down to that I don’t think you should be spending $5000 on a pitch deck that’s nuts if you guys actually um, we’ve got. We’ve got a pretty good pitch deck designer if you go to forward Vc. We’ve got an offers page on there that. And there’s ah, a guy on fiverr I found who’s pretty good. He’s done a bunch of pitch decks see something like twenty thirty forty bucks to make your pitch deck look nice I would recommend doing something like that once you’ve put all the awesome information in there to get someone to kind of spruce it up a little bit but don’t waste 5 grand on a pitch deck.

James McWalter

I Fully agree fully agree. Um and thinking then thinking about like where where are you seeing like the biggest opportunities like what parts. Ah you know of the I Guess the kind of larger climate sustainability. Base. Are you most excited by you said carbon credits are maybe kind of less interesting to you guys. But yeah, what’s getting you most excited right now. Yeah.

Matt Ward

There’s a lot of really interesting things circular economy companies that actually have a business model that works so generally some type of product and then some secondary monetization behind it like the one we were talking about. We’re investing in a company now. That’s.

Matt Ward

Decarbonizing plastic and decarbonizing large industry is where I see massive opportunity because it’s boring old outdated and it’s a massive input on the um overall economy size massive input on the overall carbon and emissions problem perspective. And if you just have a ah product that’s better than everything else, price and performance or environment wise you can have I mean you’re not talking about small contracts. You’re talking about Tens of millions of tons or whatever it ends up being It’s it’s very serious impact. We’re not so hot on the. The imobility or ev space outside of um, potentially batteryies so chart charging I think is pretty competitive. It’s kind of going to be a race to the bottom as um, uber was and other things in terms of ride sharing anything that’s a massive land grab is generally something. We don’t like to play in. We’re pretty big on. Let’s see what are what are some of the other interesting areas. We’re seeing a lot in terms of carbon capture not a lot in terms of effective carbon capture or carbon capture in the field but I think that will be an interesting space reducing packaging find fascinating things that increase.

Matt Ward

Energy production. So we’re looking at ah a company in the wind space now I’m advising another company that’s turning rooftop panels they’re adding cogeneration and rotating axes maxen m x un so that they can generate. 3.5 times as much solar energy I told you about climate crop things that are making large industries a decent percentage better have very large impacts and things that aren’t necessarily sexy so construction Ag Tech biotech we’re seeing a lot of very cool stuff. That’s a little bit tougher because we need to really have help on the due diligent side of things. Overall I would say there’s just a massive explosion Europe Israel north america our primary sector our primary focuses. And those are kind of the primary strengths what we see when it comes to the clean tech space.

James McWalter

Yeah I love a lot of those myself. Um, as I’ve jokingly said on on this podcast in the past that if you’re interested in starting climate tech company and you don’t have much expertise in some of the errors you mentioned start reading advanced materials articles on Google scholar. And find ones that were published in the last three years and then like start making some phone calls so as academics and saying if they want to start companies because the disruption of you know, plastic concrete steel. Ah you know the material side I think is really fascinating and then you get to the higher order industrial processes in general and that’s even I think more fascinating and yeah.

Matt Ward

Earth.

James McWalter

You know these companies um are using excel they’re like at best right? like even just thinking about the software side of things. Let alone the actual processes and materials themselves and so yeah I think that because they’re so difficult to decarbonize There’s been a little bit of delay right? We’ve had a large focus on energy transportation. Um, this kind of flourishing around carbon credits and voluntary markets which I agree I think is not going to be I think what a lot of people were betting on a year or two ago um and then people are you know, basically going through that emissions pie chart and just saying okay, what’s next and I do think a lot of the things you talked about are very exciting. Although the. Ah, time to yeah $100000000 revenue might be longer than I think what a traditional kind of Vc vehicle might expect.

Matt Ward

I think that’s both excuse me I think that’s both true and false it depends on how quickly you’re able to get those large scale customers. So on some of those industrials on some of those construction corporates, etc. That’s kind of the relationships that we’re building with forward Vc where we can connect the dots and suddenly you go from a pilot to twenty thirty fifty million in revenue over anight when you scale across these type of companies. So while there is often a long sale cycle if you can shortcut that cell cycle. Then there’s massive upside for the for the companies on on both sides really.

James McWalter

I yeah i. So absolutely yeah, and the course of like a multi-i-year startup a 6 to nine month sales cycle is actually not that long, especially if the upside is as large as what we’re talking about um, wanted to before we finish off I wanted to get your take on. Some of the big policy changes so ira um, which I’m trying to get people to use Ira instead of the ira because it’s going to be a real struggle as an irish person saying the ira for the next decade. Um, so yeah, you heard it here. People say ira please.

James McWalter

Um, but yeah, Ira obviously has a ton of incentives for a lot of different types of clean technologies. You know hydrogen there’s ton of on the energy side. There’s you know, carbon sequestration and capture and. I think that historically there have been definitely been some startups who tried to use regulatory arbitrage and you know we’ll go deep into bills to try to figure out. You know how will it. You know how will there be this kind of leverage that they can apply to their own. Go-to-market their own products and so on. But there’s also ah obviously ah, nearly by definition a huge amount of distortion when you have these bills. How do you think about the best way that startups can kind of interact with these large policy changes to you know to to build a better startup. Yeah.

Matt Ward

If your business doesn’t work without without the funding then you’re setting yourself up for trouble I think they should look at it as icing on the top and a way to hack their way into fast growth but you never know how long those how long those incentives are going to be there as a caveat though. And terms of businesses not being businesses without incentives. We wouldn’t really have farming or fossil fuels either then because there’s so much in terms of subsidies that go into both of those and yet those subsidies even the fossil fuels 1 have been continued to today so I would say take advantage of. All of the subsidies that you can. It shouldn’t be the core of your business. However, and I think there’s probably a lot of services and possible service providers or even software providers that just unlocking that type of funding for these type of clean tech startups could be ah could be pretty game changing.

James McWalter

Yeah, yeah, the the main street for Ira is I’ve had 2 different individuals mentioned that to me as startup ideas literally in the last week and I fully agree you know at at a minimum look at the exploration date of these incentives and if it’s honestly less than 10 years. Um, you know I guess buyer Beware kind of thing. Um. But math. This has been absolutely brilliant before we finish up is there anything I should have asked you about but did not please.

Matt Ward

So here’s the here’s the plug part then I guess so if anyone’s interested if you’re running an awesome climate company and you want to pitch on the startup tank. It’s just the startup tank dot com you can find us on all major podcasting platforms. You can apply to pitch. We run that twice a month in front of top vcs like. Lower carbon and capital future energy ventures zero carbon capital luber morgan etc. The companies that pitch. It’s really getting network effects now. It’s actually pretty cool. The companies that are pitching are getting a bunch of investors afterwards literally reaching out to them by applying there. You’re applying to to and for our syndicate to invest as well. Speaking of the syndicate none of this is a solicitation. But if you happen to be accredited or like investing in startups. You can find out about more and about us and what we do at for ward so the number 4 wards.vc/syndicate we invest in companies that move the world forward. We’d love to have you. Look at what we’re doing. Of course we’re not inviting you to join. But if you were to join. We’re doing some pretty awesome companies now and then in terms of maybe one last one last call to action. So for founders out there for investors out there if you’re looking to find your ideal investor. You’re looking to find other coinvestors. You’re looking to get a better overview of the space. Like I said we published our now. It’s 780 plus climate funds incubators accelerators cvcs. It’s on our website as well. Just forward dot vc you’ll see it on there. You can use all of that filter by stage sector geography check size to find the exact right? investor co-invesctor etc for you.

Matt Ward

We’ve got slack communities on there as well for founders and investors and would just yeah, love to connect with anyone who’s listening in on this and wants to put and play a big role in the climate space Run Team planet together I say so that’s why I publish the database information wants to be free. So let’s do this thing together.

James McWalter

Yeah, absolutely and we’ll include those links in the show notes. Thank you Matt has been amazing.

Matt Ward

Awesome! Thanks so much as well. James it’s been fun.

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